Now that video chatting service Chatroulette has become a verified phenomenon, its owner is hoping to attract advertisers with a revamped version meant to be less about naked people and more about making money.

At least that’s what the site’s founder, a 17-year-old kid from Moscow, is hoping to achieve. The first reactions, however, leave a lot to be desired.

I noticed a worrying number of issues with the site’s performance and redesign. The new version comes in difficult times for the Oslo, Norway-based startup after advisor Shawn Fanning (of Napster fame) left the company as advertisers were ignoring the site for fear of nudity and inappropriate activity.

TechCrunch described the new version as “flaky,” warning that the “penis problem is far from gone:

At the moment the site is really flaky, but when the video chat does work it seems like the penis problem is far from gone both in my own initial experience and what I am hearing from other users. It actually looks like it has gotten worse…

The Chatroulette website is a project by a Russian student who revealed in a New York Times interview that he created the service for himself and his friends, with no business plan in place. “Video is not boring,” Ternovskiy quipped responding to TechCrunch’s question about the site’s sudden popularity, included below.

Chatroulette would have gone down in history as yet another video chatting service if it weren’t for the nudity that has basically put a me-too service on the map. I expect the site to play this card more subtly in the coming months and eventually shake the sex angle entirely for the sake of advertising dollars.

However, selling a service with the sex stigma to advertisers is virtually impossible. Chatroulette is strongly associated with porn and no premium brand wants that kind of exposure. Their strategy of intentional piggy-backing on headlines may have sealed their doom, in my opinion.